Grove School students build stage for annual play in Redlands

REDLANDS - Grove School students are renovating their stage for this spring's play, "Midsummer Night's Dream," as part of a mini-course on stagecraft.

In the middle of a small field facing Orange Street, they're screwing wooden block bases together, attaching back boards and preparing to assemble the stage.

The school uses the same pieces every year for their annual Shakespearean production.

"This stage is going to be unorthodox," because it will be bigger than it's been before and include a mountainscape, said junior Drake Citron.

It's also going to be taller than usual. The students will stack the stage pieces to create an alpine effect.

They've been working on it for about five days so far, and expect it take about three days more, just in time for rehearsals to begin, said seventh-grader Matthew Thornton on Wednesday morning, while he was working on the project.

"It's going to be a mini-castle with a balcony," he said.

Eighth-grader Ethan Durham said Wednesday was a particularly strenuous work day, because there was heavy lifting and use of power tools.

Once the stage is assembled, painting will begin.

Drake, vice president of the campus' Thespian Society, has been involved in the school's Shakespearean plays for five years. Being in theater counts toward his school requirement of 70 hours of internship and community service.

The stagecraft course meets Wednesdays and sometimes after school under the leadership of former Farm manager Bill Feld, who left Grove a couple of years ago to move to Texas, but recently came back and is now serving in a volunteer capacity. The Farm and The Grove compose Redlands' public charter school.

English teacher Beth Elliott-Hora is the Shakespeare play director.

Costume making already has begun.

The play will be performed May 4 and 11 at Orange and Iowa streets, and will be open to the public. Tickets will be available. For more information, call the school at 909-798-7831.

Kaitlyn Berry, Gloria Chavez, Garrett Durham, Alyssa Fresquez, Dennis Neal Miller and Paloma Olmos contributed to this report. They are members of The Grove's mini-course on journalism, under the instruction of Daily Facts editor Toni Momberger.